How I forecast the future of weather

SOOn after my 18th birthday in 1946, i joined the rAf as a radar fitter. i was posted to rAf Stradishall in Suffolk, home to four squadrons of Lancaster bombers. rAf stations opened to the public on Battle of Britain day, September 15, and for that occasion in 1947 our section hut had the test rigs functioning so we could show visitors how aircrews used radar as a flying aid. My baby was the H2S scanner, the blind-bombing equipment fitted under the aircraft to transmit and receive signals reflected from rivers, coastlines and towns. for test purposes, the scanner sat on the bench facing upwards, scanning the usually empty sky. ‘What’s that?’ one man asked me, pointing to the scanner’s screen. i said it was a rain cloud and explained that by observing the speed at which it moved, i could calculate when it would rain. As we talked, the cloud had come closer by a mile. i said that at this rate, it would rain by 3pm. At one minute to three, the first raindrops were splashing on the windows. At one minute past, it was raining steadily. At 3.30pm, i was summoned into the office. With our section head was an officer who looked less than pleased. ‘How dare you tell a civilian that it was going to rain at 3pm!’ he berated me. My chatty visitor had gone straight to the Meteorology section and told the officer about my prediction for rain at 3pm. Meteorology said it certainly wasn’t likely to rain that afternoon. After all, what did the radar boys know about the weather? When the rain began to fall, the visitor triumphantly told the Met officer: ‘There, i told you so!’ Having been shown up by a civilian, the officer was not happy and i became the target of his ire. When he had cooled down, i showed him how i could, with a fair degree of accuracy, predict the weather. The Meteorology department, which still predicted the weather with a piece of damp string, was somewhat deflated. now all weather forecasting is done by radar observation, but many years were to pass before meteorologists were prepared to accept this technology, so slowly does the establishment change its ways. William John Purkis,

Wisbech, Cambs.